Bug report ?

One more that I know of: Ships on autopilot sometimes stop 2 tiles prior to their target destination even if they have more than two move points left. This can be easily be seen by turning on "watch ships on autopilot". One characteristic of this is that the code will position the screen to a ship that is on autopilot that has not finished all of its moves but will not select the ship (ship monitor screen shows a bunch of N/As). Then the game refuses to let you move the screen to where the ship is no longer visible, and many other actions you might try seem to take 10-100 times longer than normal. If, however, you select the ship by clicking on it in the main screen, everything else frees up and operates at normal speed again. Saviing and reloading the game may be causing these ships to be selected again and may be completing their moves (I think I have seen it do this but I am not certain), and the game then runs at a more normal speed.

3E is not the first build this happened on. I believe I first saw it on 3D and reported it.

The ships stopping early seems to happen a lot when the destination tile changes. Like when you build a space station there and the other constructors on the way stop early. At least that is where I see it the most.

Kvim

Oh, another bug, kinda:

When on the main screen and you click Planet list or ship list, the sector map button stays depressed. But you can (and have to) click it to get the map back. The planet and ship lists don't stay depressed. This actually seems to be working the way it is intended, but I think it makes more sense to have the buttons stay down that you are currently using.

Kvim

I had a SurveyShip disappear on me when it went into a wormhole (maybe it was a black-hole LOL ). It still showed as a blue dot on the galaxy-view, but it was gone from the normal view. Then when I selected it in the ship-list, the view centered on nothing, but I could move the nothing into the next tile and then it would appear again!

That's a fog of war bug. If your ships or planets are fogged over, use ctrl-r (I think that's right) and it'll clear everything up.

Thanks! Now that you mention the fog-of-war bug, I remember that one of my SpaceStations was always fogged over. :notsure:

One other is that some ships cannot be attacked. This is a big one. It has cost me a few starbases.

You can attack the ships. Put your ship on one side of the ship you want to attack and then click on the tile on the opposite side of it. Your ship will attack the ship when it tries to go.

Kvim

More on the autopilot movement:

The ships failing to complete autopilot movement do indead seem to coincide with the creation of star bases in my case. I have also figured out how to find them without having to depend on "watch autopilot moves" on all of the time, (but it requires autoturn off). When a ship on autopilot fails to complete its moves trying to scroll the main screen by moving the pointer to an edge of the screen slows down. When this happens turn on "watch autopilot ships" on, When you return from the options screen the main screen will center on the ship with moves left. Then you can click on the ship and re-designate its target or move it manually. If there is another autopilot ship left the screen will then center on that ship. Once all autopilot ships have completed their moves the screen scrolling returned to normal. In checking my debug.err file I found one line that may be of use:
=======
Debug Message: A* Path too long to calculate (7.000000). Aborting
==============
There is nothing I can do to tie the line to any particular ship, but it looks like it may be connected.

Good luck on this one, Cari, and if there is anything more I can do to help track it down, let me know.

Umm...

I'm not sure about not being able to attack ships. I haven't had trouble with it, so maybe I got it fixed. I'll do some more combat testing, though.

So saving the game and reloading it also fixes the stalled ship bug? Does it seem to happen in proximity to nearby objects (stars, ships, etc?)

I have seen the ships stopping early bug a lot lately, and not always at 2 tiles from the destination.

I have also had the ships not being able to attack in every game I have played.

The pattern on the stalled ships I am seeing has changed. As Kvim pointed out earlier in this thread mine seem to stall when the target tile has a change, such as building a star base on the tile. I am now thinking that the one that stalled two tiles away was coincidental (it just happened to be two tiles away when the status of the tile changed and it was the first one I noticed). Since then I have had them stalling from many _sectors_ away, and every time I have tried checking their destination it has been to a tile that just changed status. Proximity to other objects does not seem to be part of the pattern for when the ships stall. Also, I have not been able to conclusively prove that saving and restoring a game resets and resumes stalled ships. That is now on my list to test for.

So the stalled ships are headed for a particular tile, a starbase is built there, and they stop (still on autopilot but not moving)?

Cari,

Yes, that is it.

Also if you go back about 4-5 posts on this thread (by Commander Lucky Jack - 12/9/2002 12:19:55 PM) you will find a description of how to detect and locate the stalled ships for this bug.

There is also the stacking bug.

The AI's tend to stack their ships on the same tile. One tile can have, for example, 30 ships from 4 different races + a space shark. This is all fine, except I think they should all be attacking each other, not having a tea-party! The other problem with this, is that I can't attack any of the ships in the stack. As long as 2 races or more have ships in a tile, I can't attack ANY ships in the tile. I know this can also work to my advantage (hiding in the crowd), but I doubt it is intentional.

As a solution to this problem, we could limit the ships on 1 tile to a single race/monster or to allied races. That would solve it, I think!

Come to think of it, I don't think my ships have ever been attacked by anyone when they've been in "space".

I don't think the AI CAN attack my ships when they're not at my systems. If this is true, then my strategy wil be as follows:

"I just build a few offensive ships, at least 1 for each system. Those ships will then hover around my systems and kill of any transports that try to invade my systems. Then I just build 2 BattleCruisers and a Transport whenever I want to invade someone. LOL "

I haven't tried this out, so I might be wrong..... :notsure:

The Sound Bug in the Planet View with a vew Sound Blaster Cards is still in Version 3E. (Strange Piping Sound)

Neuromancers,

"I don't think the AI CAN attack my ships when they're not at my systems. If this is true..."

It's not true. I have been attacked everywhere (particularly when I'm sending transport ships to enemy planets - they need heavy guard)